Liberation, Rights, and Freedom: LGBT Collective Identities and Partisanship

• In Event: LGBTQ Political Unity and Division

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between LGBT collective identities and individual-level partisanship and ideology using a nationally representative, multi-racial sample of LGBT people in the United States. Previous research argues that LGBT collective identities are constituted around a liberationist identity, meaning working outside existing institutions to pursue change, or an assimilationist identity, which views assimilation into mainstream institutions, such as political parties and marriage, as the path to equality. This conventional wisdom in previous work, however, has masked important variation in collective identities that have implications for LGBT people’s partisanship. New research on the political development of LGBT identities has shown, for example, that activists have contested liberation, civil rights, and civil libertarian collective identities and that these identities can be traced to alignment with the Republican and Democratic parties. This paper measures LGBT collective identities and explores their association with partisanship and political attitudes using a nationally representative sample of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from the 2020 Collaborative Multi-Racial Political Survey. It also examines variation in collective identities across LGBT subgroups, race, and gender. In doing so, it reveals how LGBT people vary in identification with their gender and sexuality and how this variation affects their partisanship.

Author

• Andrew Thomas Proctor, Wake Forest University